Pages

August 23, 2012

The Best Apologies Come with Bacon (+ Quiche Lorraine)

Mr. Bear is basically a saint. Especially in bed.

Wait, wait. Don’t go.
This isn’t about to get inappropriate or weird. Well, inappropriate anyway. It’s pretty weird. But just quirky-weird. Not “I want to curl up like an armadillo and
un-know all that stuff about your toe fetish” weird. This isn’t about our attempt to act out 50
Shades of Grey with lunchmeat hand puppets, or anything.* It’s about how I’m wired wrong. I panic at bedtime.

The night always starts off perfectly
normally: some halfhearted debate over what time to go to bed, then
teethbrushing. Jammers. Pills taken.
Face washed - because, let’s face it, the days when I could expect to
sleep in my makeup without waking up looking more or less like a moray eel are
over. Thermostat adjusted. Doors and windows checked. Decorative bed pillows banished. I swear there was a time when I just went to
bed when I was tired. Now it seems like
preparation for some Olympic sport.
Which is probably an apt comparison, because what's about to
happen is like a triathlon of crazy.

*If someone were to do this and put
it up on YouTube, I’m pretty sure we’d allbecome famous. Just something to think about.

Up until this point, everyone
concerned (you know, all two of us.) has been sleepy, listless and complacent. Mr. Bear, unburdened by the demands of eel-face,
reaches bed first and quietly reads; by all outward appearances, he seems
unaware that the Bothering Hour is nigh.

That's our name for it:
“Bothering.” As in: “I’m going to head
to bed at 10:30. Ten minutes to change
and brush my teeth, 20 minutes of Bothering…I should be able to get to sleep by
11.” It’s factored into the equation.

I don’t mean to bother. I swear. I think my unconscious is just unclear on the
mechanics of sleep. So it has a nightly
existential crisis, thinking that I’m going to close my eyes, the world will go
dark, and we’ll never wake up again. It
starts to panic; it flails; and when it realizes there’s no cheating death, it
decides to go out with a bang, with the closest thing to Mardi Gras that the
human mind can manufacture: a full-on adrenaline jamboree.

Five minutes ago I was slouching towards
unconsciousness. Now I’m gloriously, manically,
vividly awake. I test the bedsprings’
bounce. I flail around under the covers. I decide to paint the bedroom and run a
marathon. There’s an excited grin on my
face that even I can tell looks straight off a Batman villain. I can’t just go read quietly in the
living room until this passes. For god's sake, it’s
Mardi Gras! I need to move, to talk,
to play. I need attention. Somehow the simple act of climbing into bed has
turned me into a border collie.

I wonder
if fish are curious about dry land. I
ask questions. “If an evil wizard turned me into a sheep, would you still let me
sleep in the bed?”* “Do you think a robot chicken could defeat a real chicken in
a fight? What about tigers? But what if the robot tiger had an assault
rifle?” There are hand gestures illustrating
what I would look like with tentacles coming out of my head. There are overzealous offers of neck
massages. There are four different puns
about porcupines. Mr. Bear checks my
cuffs and pockets for contraband candy wrappers. No mere brain chemical should be able to
cause this.

* Actual answer: "Would you still be taking baths as often as you do now?"

My husband has many fine qualities,
and patience ranks very high among them.
He can ignore the Bothering for an impressively long time. As I’m bouncing away and tossing pillows,
he’ll quietly read his book. Then, as I
notice him and sinisterly drift in his direction, he’ll continue to quietly read his
book. Experience shows that this
behavior can survive at least six insistent prods to the ribs. But no one wants this to devolve into tickling,
so at this point he usually agrees to discuss the complexities of robot
chicken fights.

But only for a few minutes, and then
he Insists.On.Bed. with a firm glare that’s the human equivalent of a rolled-up newspaper. So I capitulate, flopping petulantly
onto my pillows – only to fall instantly into blissful sleep, drifting away on
rose-colored clouds with dreams of dancing lobstermuffins. Leaving Mr. Bear, I’m sure, to stare wide-eyed
at the ceiling - suspecting that this, like so many others, is just a ploy to
lower his defenses.

His discomfort belongs to the night,
and mine to the day. Each morning, I
wake with the groggy suspicion of a hangover.
The dread of things done and half-remembered. Returned to my senses, I prepare for the
usual long, apologetic morning in the kitchen.
I drag out the frying pan. Because the best apologies are the ones made with bacon.

Have you ever eaten good quiche? No?
Okay, imagine a pudding. A thick,
creamy, robe-your-mouth-in-flavor pudding.
Now imagine that it tastes like bacon and Gruyere. Now add a warm, flaky, buttery pie crust to that
for textural contrast. Now bake it until
it has a blistery golden top. Okay,
fine. It’s not like pudding at all. But you want it now, don’t you? Mission accomplished.

2.Add Shortening
to mixture and process again. Mixture
should seem sandy - this will take about 10 seconds.

3.Add Butter
to mixture and pulse 10 times to cut it in.
Mixture should look like crumbs - some bigger pieces of butter will
remain, but shouldn’t be any larger than small peas.

4.Place mixture in a bowl. Sprinkle with 4 tablespoons of Ice Water.

5.With a rubber spatula, fold mixture
together until it forms a dough, pressing down on it with the wide side of the spatula. If
necessary, add 1 additional tablespoon Ice
Water.

6.Shape dough into a 4-inch
disc; wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Dough will keep in refrigerator for 2 days.

Make Pie Crust:

1. Take Pie Dough out of the refrigerator. If very hard, let sit on the counter until
workable.

2. Roll dough into a 12-inch circle. I like to do this between two sheets of plastic
wrap, regularly flipping the dough over and periodically pulling off the top
sheet of plastic wrap and re-applying it smoothly.

3. Transfer dough to a 9-inch pie
plate. If you’ve rolled out the dough
between plastic wrap, you can simply remove the top layer, use the bottom layer
to carry the dough to the pan, and then upend the dough into the pan. If you’ve rolled it out on a floured counter,
loosely roll the dough up around your rolling pin and then gently unroll into
the pan.

4. Gently press dough so that it lies flat
against all surfaces of the pie pan.
Tuck any overhanging dough under itself and then flute the rim or press
down all around it with the tines of a fork.

5. Place pie plate in refrigerator and chill
for 40 minutes – dough should feel firm.

6. Move pie plate to freezer for 20 minutes –
dough should be very cold.

3. Fill foil with 2 cups of pie weights,
uncooked rice or beans, or coins. Metal
and ceramic weights are the most effective because they’re heavier.

4. Place pie plate in oven (I found this
step absolutely terrifying, but my ceramic Wilton pie plate made it from
freezer straight to oven without shattering into 1000 pieces. I’ve heard that Pyrex is safe for this as
well, but can’t vouch for it personally). Cook for about 25 minutes, until dough under
foil looks dry and light-colored.

5. Meanwhile, in a pan, cook Bacon over Medium Heat until crisp,
about 5 minutes. Drain and set on paper
towels to cool.

7. When pie crust is done, remove from
oven. Carefully lift foil and pie
weights out of crust. Return crust to
oven for about 5 minutes, until light golden brown.

8. Remove pie crust from oven. Sprinkle Cheese
and Bacon evenly into crust. Carefully add Egg Mixture. Liquids
should reach to about ½ inch from top of crust.

9. Place quiche in oven. Bake for about 35 minutes – top should be light
golden brown, center should be set but jiggly (it’ll set up more as it cools),
and a knife inserted about 1 inch from the edge of the quiche will come out
clean.

10. Cool on a rack to desired temperature –
quiche can be eaten warm or at room temperature.

[ Notes: (1) As you can see from the pictures, I let
the edges of my pie crust get a little…Cajun-style. You probably don’t want them that dark. If they seem to be approaching it, mold a little
strip of foil to cover the browned sections.
(2) I’m not going to deny that this recipe has a lot of steps. You can certainly cook your bacon ahead of
time. And if you want to use a purchased
pie crust, you’ll be eliminating about 2/3 of the work. It won’t be quite as wonderful, but we can’t
always be perfect, can we? I’m the last
person in the world to snitch on you for taking a shortcut. ]

6 comments:

Ha! I absolutely loved this post... Probably because I have similar bedtime tendencies. Perhaps I should make this quiche for my hubby over the weekend. Yum! Thanks for submitting it for this month's Kitchen Bootcamp challenge!

Well, thanks for hosting! I think it's such a fantastic idea, and such a fun way to mix things up a bit beyond the regular post-a-week schedule. Glad you liked this essay - I promise you won't get any complaints if you make the quiche. :)

I have been looking for a recipes for about two years now that turned out how my grandma used to make. and this isn't quiet it but its really really close! I think I will stop looking now cuz I'm satisfied with this one!